Lines and curves are all it takes

When you look around, you see a confusing collection of shapes, feelings and contexts — all moving in different directions.

But luckily, life can be broken down into lines and curves.

Let's look at a few dimensions of life, starting with something as basic as geometry.

The oval is just a forlorn circle of squished curves.

The square is merely a cheeky impostor posing as four lines.

Now let's look at business:

To improve profit, you have to bend the cost curve.

To figure out if you're making a profit, you have to examine the bottom line.

Now let's look at sports:

To get a first down in football, you have to move the ball 10 yards to a line.

To be a successful hitter in baseball, you have to hit the curve.

Even in matters of human emotion where certain feelings are unsettling you, all can be made clear with lines and curves.

For example, take the negative feelings of envy and guilt. Now draw a line between those feelings and their better opposites of admiration and forgiveness.

If you don't cross the line from the better feelings to the negative ones, you'll be fine.

In general, when you experience situations in life that are outside of your control, like getting into a car crash that wasn't your fault, or losing a friend's cherished memento that you were trying to carefully protect or getting a bad case of the flu, such events shouldn't give you cause for despair.

Instead, you can resolve those situations by exercising patience until you can round the mental corner that is holding you up, which really is just negotiating two lines with a curve.

If you break life down into lines and curves, you will find simplicity, form and beauty.

You will eliminate the noise and clutter that are blocking your exit from the morass. You will gain the freedom you need to explore new directions of thought and growth.

As an old African proverb states, the first one down an unknown path doesn't see the curves.

Whoever said that"¦what a lovely line.

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Rob McKenzie is a professor of communication studies at East Stroudsburg University.